A season of changes

Hi Friends and family!

 It´s been quite a while since we got anything new up here.   As many of you know of you´ve been on a road trip with me, I hate that time of the trip when you´re ALMOST half-way.  Say hour 5 of a 10 hour trip – that little bit of suffering until half-way always seems too long.    Well, its seems what is true of road trips can be true of longer-term commitments too.   Feb 25 marks 17 months for us in Bolivia, and half-way in our contract.   We have struggled a bit in the last couple months to keep our chins up as some projects drug to a halt and we were asked to write plans for the third time because we might need to change the source of funding for our work. 

I assume plenty of you will be reading this right away as you´re all snowed in and hoping the heater stays on!  Here we´re enjoying the peach harvest with the apples son to come!    Jeremy and I are working on an Apple cider press to get some more value out of the non-marketworthy apples, more value for them and for us!

Cassie and I are back in Moro Moro after taking a little time away to sort ourselves out, we´re working hard but in a new direction.  No one knows at this point if we´ll be replaced after our term is up, so our real job for the next 18 months is to work ourselves out of a job by training local technicians to do our jobs – then with the resources of the mayor and perhaps continuing with MCC, they can maintain and expand the water systems without direct involvement from outsiders.   We´re enjoying the task, but progress in the work of training can leave you with a lot fewer signposts to know how far you´ve gone, and how far you have to go.

 

Here´s a recent photo of our Moro Moro team.    From right to left…

Jeremy Good – one year volunteer from Pennsylvania – working in letrines and erosion barriers

Fernando – local student who just graducated wtih an agronomy degree, and is finishing his practical component with MCC´s sponsorship – working in field trials of organic fertilizers

Nathan Harder – volunteer who´s been here 4 years now, working in organic agricultura and an irrigation project

Patrocinio Garvizu – our buen jefe (good boss) – Officially the rural programs coordinator, lives in Santa Cruz and does a lot of leg work to get us materials and keep us sane when our culture clashes with that of the Moromoreñans

Cassie – Busy as always on executing water systems, leading the church women´s group in a fertilizer course, and most recently,  working her tail off translating plans and getting proposals ready and re-ready as we switch sources of funding (internal to MCC switch – no worries)

ME! – Working as always in water systems and latrines, but now that we have a truck and a larger team, I spend a good bit of time fixing motorcycles and coordinating materials, the truck Schedule, and helping Jeremy on erosion barriers.

Come see Moro Moro - Virtually

If you`ve ever wondered exactly where we live, check out this link...

We have the ambiguously whitish roof (actually metal) that is indicated on the map. A block SW is the catholic church (yellow). The dark line next to our house is the main drainage ditch for the town. Follow the roads SW and NW of town and you can see our daily commutes. Enjoy!

Google Maps Link to Andy and Cassie's House in Moro Moro


Ver Moro Moro, Bolivia en un mapa más grande

Cuss words

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately with folks from the Evangelical church. We’re remodeling the sanctuary--what once was literally a one car garage that thanks to an oddly shaped lot, was wide wider at one end. The only entrance was the swinging garage door was a garage door that was either completely open or completely closed. In winter, it was a tough decision to go to church – you needed your stocking cap, long underwear and several sweaters. The decision was even tougher knowing you didn’t have a nice warm house to come home to. So the plan was to take over a chunk of the parsonage and make a 40’ x 15’ room with a real ceiling and closeable small doors.

The thing that has given me the most laughs is the almost cuss words that gt used at church. You know, like we say darn or shoot. Well, to avoid saying the mierda (poop-word), they draw out the syllables of mie-e-e-rcoles (Wednesday). This can be incredibly confusing when they say: Wednesday, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And I respond: But I thought we were working Tuesday!

Bolivia´s Climate Crusade

So you, like me, may have associated Aljazeera only with releasing the latest Taliban announcements. It appears they do some decent journalism as well, and in English! Here’s a great video on climate change´s impact on Bolivia, the role of the “Global South”, and some good thinking on how to move forward with solutions instead of just bickering about punitive damages.

Original link on Al Jazeera:
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/2010/05/2010518121127315453.html

Youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjHrVJPb-g


Here´s a photo of dad and I exploring some of the same terrain seen in the video. It is quite dramatic seeing up close how the landscape has changed.

A couple excerpts:
“Bolivia is on the receiving end of a crisis they did not create. It’s also a crisis they can’t solve, at least not on their own, and that’s where the climate debt movement comes in. As the U.S. confronts ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, its government is demanding that BP, the polluter, should pay. Bolivia is trying to apply that principal on a global scale.”


“In countries like Bolivia, the climate crisis is impossible to deny. In countries like the U.S., denial is everywhere. Not just the denial of climate skeptics, but the daily denial of millions of people who know the crisis is real, yet somehow can’t summon the urgency to act.”

“How do we find a way for impoverished people and impoverished countries to economically develop in a way that is not at the expense of the environment and that recognized their right to develop, just as the countries in the North had a right to develop?”

“Climate debt: the basic principle is polluter pays. There is finite space for atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, and the rich world has already used up more than its fair share. For poor countries to develop, they need help to leapfrog the dirty technologies that created our modern world and created the climate crisis.”

June/July in photos

Of course, words often don't do justice to the sights/sounds/smells that we live every day. Here's a few pictures to approach sharing of the sights. We haven't quite figured it out, but we'll keep working on how to share the smells.

I'm in bed with a cold - we were planning to head out of Moro Moro anyway to visit fellow workers in Charagua, near the Chaco desert, and I had the though... I can lay in bed in Moro Moro, or lay in bed in Santa Cruz, and have INTERNET! So here's some pictures to pass your and my time!


A couple of young ladies and their fine harvest of ”morado” (purple) corn – especially good for making api - the famous sweetened ground corn drink. You should have seen them grin and giggle when they told me it wasn't even their corn.

Our front room full of eager readers digging into the bilingual Bible story books sent down by Andy’s mom.


Potato harvest in progress, as viewed from our work site. Each blue bag hold 250 pounds of potatoes and are awaiting horses and burros to haul them out of the field and a strong back to load them on the truck.


Cassie showing off her stained hands after a day of tying re-bar together to create the shell of a ferrocement water tank.

Our friend Adan, working on his new rainwater capturing tank. His metal roof will capture ~30,000 liters of water (7900 gallons) per year, 11,000 liters of which can be stored in the tank for the dry season. If, as planned, the dry season lasts 5 months, his family can use 70 liters (18.5 gallons) per day.

After a 2 hour hike to make measurements on his spring and talk about possibilities for making a water system, Ermenahildo, spry for his 84 years, and his faithful companion weren't going to let me make any errors. They're checking my math.

Money

While hosting the visitors from Fresno Pacific University, we got to chatting about money, and I had the thought that I have never put anything about money here. Here’s just a quick view of incomes and expenses here in Bolivia.

The exchange rate for the Bolivian currency, Bolivianos (Bs.), hovers around Bs. 7:$1. Very often, incomes in the US and Bolivia are comparable in their respective currencies – consider the wage for a security guard at Bs. 19,200 – not far from what that job might pay in the US, but in dollars. Now put yourself in his shoes earning $19,200, or even a manager, at $30,000--here is a list of the prices you would face. Consider how your consumption might change…How often would you spend $1.50 per minute talking on your cell phone, or how would your driving habits change if you were paying over $14 for a gallon of gas. It is very interesting the pattern of prices that emerge as you shop. Those things that can be exported, or have to be imported, you pay a world price – say infrastructure and natural gas to make electricity, or Toyota Corollas. If ingredients in its production are exportable, say corn and soy for producing eggs/meat, you pay world prices for that portion, and a poor-country price for the labor. Things that are mostly labor, say daily wages for a mason or eating at a family restaurant, you pay much less.

You can see the paradox – things seem expensive to the average person, but still cheap on the world scale. So while $8.50 shoes that might last 3 years as your only shoes may seem like a bargain, Bs. 60 isn’t too easy to come by, and even after multiple repairs, we see folks working in those shoes until they’ve worn through the soles and hardly any leather keeps them attached.

We list our incomes here, but from these numbers, it’s difficult to equalize them. MCC provides us with a long list of perks that are uncommon here. They provide furniture, life insurance, a computer, motorcycles/gas, and when we’re traveling other than on vacation, MCC pays. Plus we have wonderful families back in the states (as the U.S. is called here) that gift us things out of reach of the average Bolivian. We can also buy things cheap on Ebay and have them brought down by friends—services quite unavailable in a country with undeveloped infrastructure (1 post office in each principal cities). All that to say, even though we have the goal of at least moderate voluntary poverty, we live well comparatively here in Bolivia.

Annual Income:	Bolivianos	$ U.S. (7:1)
Security guard or driver	19,200	2,743
Teacher (national schools are only 8:30-12:30)	21,000	3,000
Low-level manager	30,000	4,286
MCC foreign worker (summed allowances for food, housing, etc., plus readjustment allowance)	24,500	3,500
Daily wage for a mason (semi-skilled day laborer)	80	11
Food:
Gallon of gasoline (subsidized)	14.21	2.03
Whole frozen chicken (dead, feathered, and gutted)	28.00	4.00
Pound of sugar	1.59	0.23
Pound of whole wheat flour	1.04	0.15
Gallon of milk (processed)	20.90	2.99
Gallon of milk (fresh from the cow)	11.40	1.63
Cheapest candy in the store	0.20	0.03
Soup and entreé (family restaurant)	13.00	1.86
Clothes:
Used pants	25.00	3.57
Locally produced sandals (leather & tire tread)	60.00	8.57
Other:
City bus fare (no transfers)	1.50	0.21
Dentist visit for cleaning	140.00	20.00
Electricity per kWh	1.00	0.14
Cheapest cell phone	300.00	42.86
Cell phone call per minute	1.50	0.21
Used Toyota Corolla (6-10 yrs old, without title, steering wheel on the wrong side)	31,500	4,500
Used Ford Explorer (8 years old, with papers)	63,000	9,000
Social Services:
Visit to government health post in rural areas	Free
Birth of a child (medical care)	Free
Attending a prenatal/infant's checkup	+25	3.57
A child completes a year of school	+200	28.57
Senior citizen monthly social security payment	+200	28.57

Healthcare has been a government priority and it shows. Healthcare is free from birth until 21yrs for all residents (including MCC workers). If the person is in school/college, this coverage extends to 24yrs. Free healthcare is also given to the elderly after 60yrs. In the rural areas that have organized and put health as a priority, there is free basic medical care for everyone. We have an excellent “posta” in Moro Moro, and have 4 doctors for a population of ~3,500 in our municipality. I’ve never waited more than 10 minutes to see the doctor, and the pharmacy is across the hall. National taxes amount to ~15% of income if you work for a registered business, and a sales tax of 13% is charged at large businesses, and at smaller places if you ask for an official receipt, a “factura.” Being an institution, we’re in trouble if we don’t insist on factura receipts.

According the the U.S. State Dept., "The United States forgave almost all of Bolivia’s bilateral debt between 1999 and 2002." Much debt remains however from international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and International Development Bank. Bolivia qualifies as a "Highly Indebted Poor Country", and debt, equaling 44% of GDP, much lower in real terms, and percentage terms than the U.S.

We have lived in Bolivia 6 weeks shy of a year, and daily discoveries continue in how our lifestyles differ, but our humanity is the same. The subtleties of prices, rural self-sufficiency, shape our context and how we relate to people around us.

June and July

Hi friends and family!

Since we last wrote, we’ve taken our 2 weeks vacation –

My (Andy) dad came down to do the manliest things we could find to do in Bolivia. This is a pretty extreme country, with plenty of “est”s in the guide book. We biked the World’s Most Dangerous Road, visited the world’s highest ski slope (17,500 ft), toured a still-working mine that dates back to the 1500’s, held lit dynamite in our hands, and boated on Lake Titicaca.

Cassie headed to the U.S. to celebrate to surprise her dad for his 50^th birthday. Continuing the surprise, they all headed on a family vacation to Breckenridge, where they golfed, rafted the river, and relaxed. She got to visit a good chunk of her extended family, and even said hi to the in-laws.

Last week, we were honored to host a group of visitors here in Moro Moro from Fresno Pacific University, a Mennonite affiliated school in California. This charming group of students is part of a Peace-building Institute put on during the summer, in which students take a couple weeks of intensive classes, and then go out and learned a bit about the world through service. They brought us a gallon Ziploc bag (the real thing), and prized as that may be, it gets better—it was full of almonds and cashews from California. The nuts didn’t last a week.

Just this last weekend we celebrated the annual July 25 fiesta in Moro Moro, honoring our patron saint Santiago (that’s him on the horse). We enjoyed watching the town go into a fury to ready everything. About half of the houses have received new paint or whitewash, and other improvements were hurried – getting electricity or a bathroom, new sidewalks. The whitewashing was pretty funny because only at a couple places did we see the sidewalk protected. You get a nicer looking house, but a terrible looking splashed-white sidewalk. Vendors come in from all over Bolivia to sell their wares, and for those without cars, it’s the time of year to buy new mattresses, pots, electronics, whatever you could need.

Cassie was sick in bed the day before the fiesta, and I was selfishly praying that she’s get better because we had to run a booth at the fair. The day before the fiesta I particularly enjoyed going out to breakfast in Moro Moro–the marketplace had little tarp-covered booths where you could sit and enjoy api (ground purple corn, cinnamon, cloves, sugar, and lemon served hot) and fry breads. At 8pm, mass was held for standing-room only crowd, and the priest knew when to shut it down when the brass band stood on the steps outside blasting their horns into the church. The fiesta went into the night with people eating potatoes fried over a dozen open fires and multiple mariachi bands in the plaza, and vendors selling every variety of wine, spirit and warm spirits with milk. I really enjoyed the tradition of the monstrous fireworks creations that were lit off at one corner of the plaza – the more sparks, spinning, and bangs, the louder the cheers.

In the morning, women cooked traditional Moromoreñian food on rocks over open fires. Flat breads of fermented wheat and cheese (Ichaska), wheat soup (Lagua), and sweet charque (dried beef) empanadas were the fare. We hosted a booth at the fair, held in the new coliseum. We had soil and compost samples from various fields, and were highlighting the connections between organic matter in the fields, reducing chemical use, water quality, and latrines. The highlight was getting people to look at the composted human manure and imagine the value and possibilities of using it to fertilize crops while at the same time protecting human health with latrines. We let them weight themselves to determine how much fertilizer they could produce in a year. FUN!

The revelry continued into the night, but Cassie and I called it quits about 9pm. Something about screaming in Spanish over the music in Spanish really wears the brain out.